1683. CONCERNING CONJUGIAL LOVE, AND [THE LOVE] OF PARENTS TOWARDS CHILDREN. Whence the origin of love truly conjugial, whence the love of parents towards children, and the [perhaps] still greater love towards grandchildren, no one has hitherto known, when yet, as there is something celestial in those loves, [knowledge respecting them] ought to come from heaven, and thus to flow, as a universal principle, into the minds of all. Nothing of this nature can be without a cause in the inmosts and the supreme, nor could anything by any means exist without a cause in the inmosts and the supreme; for what is there without a cause and a principle of being? [In this case] the principle is manifest, to wit, the Lord's love towards the universe of creatures, as well angels and spirits as men, as being of Him, whence that love in itself is compared to conjugial love, and is predicated of the Lord as the bridegroom and husband, and of the Church as the bride and wife. Apart from the Lord's love towards all and each of His creatures, and His manifest influx into the inner and inmost of human minds, there never could exist any conjugial love, consequently any love of good, which is in various ways derived from conjugial love. In like manner, unless the Lord loved all and each as a father his children, and the inmost heaven from the Lord, as a mother her infants, there would by no means exist any storge [or parental affection]. The greater love or storge towards grandchildren cannot be a matter of self-origination; wherefore love descends; it comes from the source now indicated. - 1748, March 25.